The First Joke
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Tag to "God Complex". It takes more than a short, unconvincing speech to break Amy's faith in the Doctor ... so what really happened to the Minotaur?


The First Joke

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Doctor Who

Copyright: BBC

"There's one thing," said Amy, "I still don't understand."

"What's that?" asked Rory.

They were sitting at their brand-new kitchen table, in their brand-new London house, with Rory's brand-new strawberry red convertible parked outside. It was a lovely house, fully furnished; even the fridge was stocked (although fish fingers and custards were not exactly their idea of a household necessity). Still, everything felt just a little bit unreal, from the steaming teacup Amy held in her hands, to the sunlight painting the white walls golden, to the scent of lilacs drifting in from the back garden. Everything but her husband's face, which looked every bit as shell-shocked as her own.

The effects of time travel, she thought absently. The ultimate jet lag.

"I'm just wondering how … how it actually died. The Minotaur, I mean."

"Wasn't it because you stopped believing?" Rory frowned at her across the table. "All those things the Doctor said to you … "

His frown deepened, and she knew why. The Doctor's effort to break her faith in him had been painful to hear, especially with the ghost of her child-self still waiting by the window on her little suitcase. _I can't save you. I led you by the hand to your death. This is what always happens. Glorious Pond, the girl who waited for me … _

Still, it would have taken more than this to break Amelia Pond.

"It didn't work on me," she said, the faintest smile tugging at her lips as she remembered. "He's a good actor, but he's not that good. I know my Raggedy Man, and I can tell when he's lying. When he said he only took me with him because he was vain and wanted to be adored … "

"He _is_ vain," Rory pointed out, with an ironic tilt of his dark-blond head. "You can't deny that."

She snorted, thinking of her old friend's notorious hat collection and his habit of making grandiloquent speeches to his enemies. "Yeah. But if he wanted to be adored, honestly, I don't think he'd have taken you along. You take the mickey out of him like no one else."

It was Rory's turn to snort, leaning back with folded arms, looking almost pleased with himself – an attitude which quickly faded as he remembered the events of today.

"And I know for a fact," Amy continued, "That he took me with him because he was curious. The girl who didn't make sense, he called me. Big house, parents disappeared, one pigheaded little boy still hanging around her no matter how often she tricked him at hide-and-seek … " Rory smiled ruefully; she put her hand over his. "Also, the fact that I didn't freak out when he started ransacking Aunt Sharon's kitchen and eating fish fingers - "

"- and custard," they finished together, savoring the bittersweetness of the joke now that he was gone.

"I know what you mean," said Rory, swirling his own cup around in a meditative manner. "There's never just one reason with him, is there?"

"Exactly." Amy nodded fiercely. "He could never be as shallow as he made himself out to be. I _knew_ he couldn't."

"He was right about one thing, though. He can't save everyone."

"I know," she said, rather more sharply than she'd intended. "I'm not a child. I've known that since Melody… since the Dream Lord, for God's sake."

Rory's first death, crumbling to dust in the yellow-painted nursery of a child that would never be born. All of Rory's deaths, each one more impossible than the others, but never any less heartbreaking to watch. The fear, always the fear, that this time would be the last. The loss of her baby, a wound which would never heal, no matter how much she loved the friend that baby had become. Her own death, only weeks ago, locked out of the TARDIS to prevent the paradox of two selves meeting.

"Of course he can't save everyone," she said, with a sigh. "But I know – I _believe_ – that he'll never stop trying. That's what makes him the Doctor. That's the kind of faith I have in him."

"But that still leaves the question, doesn't it?" Rory shrugged. "If he couldn't stop you from believing, how did we cut off the Minotaur's food supply? Unless … "

He checked himself, his gray eyes suddenly far away. In the silence of their kitchen, they could hear the growl of a neighbor's lawn mower, the twitter of a bird in the garden, and the thin, persistent humming of a stainless-steel refridgerator model that might not even have been invented yet. Amy took a large swallow of hot tea, burned her tongue, and swallowed a curse. She waved her hand in front of Rory's face.

"Hmm?" He blinked. "Oh, sorry. I was just … this is going to sound strange."

"Oh, like being trapped by a Minotaur in a tacky eighties hotel is a perfectly normal start to our day."

"For us, I'm afraid it is," Rory deadpanned. "Anyway, about that Minotaur? Maybe we didn't starve him. Maybe … maybe he overate."

"Overate? On what – faith?" She had to admit, that did sound rather bizarre. A giggle escaped before she could prevent it.

"You see, Amy, I knew you could do it," he said simply, his plain face alight with love and admiration. "Once you get an idea into that gorgeous ginger head of yours," he wrapped his finger around a strand of her red hair, "You hold on to it. I knew if anyone could save us, it was you."

Amy gasped. "But the Doctor said … "

"I think he even believed it," said Rory, with fond exasperation. "But you know what a skewed perspective he can have, especially when he starts feeling guilty. What do you bet that he'll come back one day thinking we hate him – can you imagine the look on his face when he finds out we don't?"

Amy grinned. The Doctor's childlike capacity for awe and delight had always been one of her favorite things about him, ever since she was a child herself. It might never happen, but it was a beautiful idea all the same.

"You do realize that idea could have backfired really badly?

"I know," he said, shaking his head. "I couldn't control it. I didn't even stop to think of how those thoughts – my thoughts about you, I mean – would interfere with the Doctor's plan. For all we knew, I could have made the Minotaur even stronger. But you see … " He took the teacup out f her hands and entwined them both with his. "You believed in the Doctor. I believed in both of you. And the Doctor, with all his thousand-year-old Time Lord mind, believed in us. Can you imagine how _strong_ all that must have been?"

Amy's heart stuttered. She a understood the thing which, with characteristic humility, he had not said. The phrase _two thousand years_ rang inside her mind; the sting of an Auton bullet; a red army cloak emerging from the shadows. If anyone's faith was everlasting, it would be the Last Centurion's.

"I know what you mean," she said. "The poor bloke didn't stand a chance."

"Between the three of us," Rory joked, "We could have fed a whole herd of Minotaurs."

"A pack. A swarm. A pride of them!"

"Clogged their arteries pretty badly."

"I don't think they covered that in nursing school."

They laughed until the tears ran down their faces and onto the table, baptizing the kitchen with the first of many happy memories to come. It was a bittersweet moment without the Doctor, but they knew – they _believed_ – it was a good sign.

If their faith could defeat monsters, it could survive anything. What better thoughts to carry along into their next adventure?


End file.
